The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (12 page)

The ring was pretty fancy for
someone like me.
 
I like long, clean
lines and a minimum of fuss with my clothing, including a minimum of
colors.
 
My favorite color to wear is
black, because it’s classic and classy, and orchestra members wear a heck of a
lot of it.
 
In my down time, I wore
black skirts and black turtlenecks and tights and shoes.
 
I wasn’t much like my mother in that
regard.
 
She loved frilly, fancy, pretty
things, the more colorful the better, the more frilly and fancy the better,
exactly like this ring.
 
It
was
much
too fancy for me.
 
I don’t even really
like to wear jewelry, could hardly be coxed into the two slim silver hoops I
put into my ears for performances.

But after the events of the past
few days, after all the life-threatening crap that had recently been happening
to me…it kind of felt like a good idea to put on my mother’s ring.
 
Maybe I was being superstitious and I
thought this tiny piece of my mother’s would give me a little luck.

But, mostly, I just wanted
something comforting to hold onto.
 

If the last few days had proved
anything, they’d proved this:

Life throws a hell of a lot of
surprises at you.
 
And things you could
never, ever predict can change your life forever.

Like an accident.

And a bodyguard.

I held up the ring to the light and
took a deep breath as I stared at the blood-red stone.
 
And then I slid the silver ring down the
third finger of my right hand.
 
It
nestled there comfortably against my skin like it’d been made for me, the
garnet still flashing in the dull light.

I turned off the lamp.
 
I turned my pillow over to the cool,
unrumpled side and placed my cheek against it with a sigh.
 
I closed my eyes, listening to the soft hush
of the rain.
 
The storm was dying down,
it seemed.

And, unexpectedly and peacefully,
the ring growing warm against my skin, I drifted off to sleep.

—-

I woke up to the smell of scrambled eggs and
perfectly cooked toast slathered in melted butter.
 
The smell was particularly strong, because these things were
right in front of my nose.

Literally.

It was morning, it had to be,
because the sun was out, and its bright, warm light suffused my bedroom,
spilling over me and my comforter.
 
I
opened my eyes and blinked at the sight greeting me.
 
The lamp on my bedside table had been pushed back, and a tray had
been set on the table.
 
The tray, an old
wooden one that I usually kept my potted begonia and watering can on, now held
one of my china plates heaped with golden scrambled eggs, dark rye toast coated
thickly with butter and blueberry jam, and a big, rounded spoonful of cottage
cheese heaped neatly on a lettuce leaf.

The lettuce leaf was really what
threw me.
 
It was something a diner
would do, serving cottage cheese on a leaf of lettuce, but, somehow, here it
was on my bedside table.
 

Layne stood in my open bedroom
doorway, leaning against the door jam with a very smug grin on her face, her arms
crossed, and her biceps curving just a little as she tilted her head at
me.
 
She was wearing a skin-tight
blue
t-shirt this morning, which made her hazel eyes somehow look green.
 
The blue t-shirt, I would like to point out,
was thin enough to show off her deeply toned abs like she was in a commercial
for a local gym.
 
Her black hair was
combed carefully to the side today, and she had on a slim leather wristwatch.

May I point out again that she was
standing in my
bedroom.

I drew the covers a little further
up and found myself blushing.
 
I was no
stranger to waking up to a woman in my bedroom—and normally, I didn’t care what
she saw.
 
But Layne…wasn’t like that.
 
She wasn’t a one-night stand, and she wasn’t
my girlfriend.

She was my intoxicatingly attractive
bodyguard…

…Who had apparently made me
breakfast in bed?

I was starting to get mixed
signals.

“You don’t have to cook for me,”
were the words out of my mouth before I realized that this was probably not the
best first thing to say to her.
 

I held the comforter to me and
painfully realized that I was only wearing a t-shirt and panties, and the
t-shirt I was wearing was one from my teenaged years, and was therefore pretty
ratty, but held nostalgia for me, which is why I kept it and wore it to bed.
 
It had a picture of Britney Spears on it,
the cover of her very first album where she looks all innocent, before all her
shit hit the proverbial fan.
 
Please
don’t judge, I’m sure you have one embarrassing piece of clothing somewhere,
too.

Or…maybe it’s just me.

“Eh, I was making myself breakfast,
and I thought:
 
why not?
 
I thought that maybe it’d take the sting out
of being held up at gunpoint last night,” she drawled, deepening her smirk.
 
“So have you always been a fan?”

Oh,
God
, she
had
seen
the shirt.
 
I rolled my eyes and shook
my head, drawing up my comforter so far that it rested beneath my nose.
 
“I swear, if you ever bring this up to
anyone else
ever
—”

“You’ll hit me, baby, one more
time?” asked Layne with a low, throaty chuckle that simultaneously made me
blush a few shades redder, but that
also
gave me the realization that I
was only wearing a t-shirt and underwear and that she was standing pretty darn
close…

Something began to stir in me,
uncoiling in my belly as I took a deep breath and bit my lip, trying to figure
out a scathing, clever comeback.

“Hey, I don’t judge,” she said
after a long moment in which I utterly failed to think up a scathing, clever
comeback.
 
Layne spread her hands and
shrugged as she grinned at me.
 
“Eat
up—you have a big day ahead of you!”

I shot her a suspicious look, but
she was already turning, her hands shoved deep in her back pockets as she
whistled “Hit Me, Baby, One More Time” on the way back to the kitchen.
 

I stared at those hands in her back
pockets.
 
Stared unabashedly, the blush
deepening in my cheeks as I realized that I wished
my
hands were in
those back pockets, not hers.

Oh,
God,
I really needed to
get a grip.
 
I bit my lip and realized
exactly how warm I was, buried beneath the comforter, and pushed it off, rising
and hobbling over to the bedroom door before shutting it with a soft
click
.
 

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the most
appropriate
thing in the world that my bodyguard had waltzed into my bedroom without
knocking (or maybe she
had
knocked, and I was too deep asleep to hear
her, I reasoned with myself) and brought me breakfast in bed while
simultaneously seeing me in all my ratty t-shirt glory.
 
And had my comforter been pushed off my
legs, too?
 
Had my rear been visible to
her?
 
God, maybe she’d seen the whole
shebang.
 
I blew a sigh and plunked
myself back down on the edge of the bed.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t
appropriate
.
 
But hot?
 
Hell, yes.

And she’d made me
breakfast
.
 
In
bed.
 
Not even my long-term girlfriends had ever made me breakfast, and I
wasn’t even
dating
Layne.

I mean, okay, Elizabeth,
get a
grip
.
 
I took a deep breath and
threaded my fingers through my tousled hair.
 
Layne was a nice person, granted.
 
Like she’d said, she’d probably just been making herself breakfast—I’d
told her last night that anything in the apartment that she wanted to use, eat,
or etc., she could—and since she’s so thoughtful, she’d figured I might like
something to eat, too.
 
It was probably
that easy of an explanation.
 
She was
making breakfast for herself and made some extra for me.
 
Case closed.

I twirled my mother’s ring around
my finger and stared at the plate mounded with eggs, cottage cheese and
toast.
 
But I wasn’t seeing the
plate.
 
I was seeing her sarcastic smile
as she teased me about once liking Britney Spears enough to keep this t-shirt
for nostalgia’s sake, and her long-fingered hands shoved deep in those dark
jeans pockets over her tightly toned ass.
 

I leaned back on my hands and let
out of a very long sigh, the sunshine filtering through the window and streaming
over me with as much heat as my blush.

Was she sending me signals, or was
she just a really nice person?
 

Either way, I couldn’t come on to
my
bodyguard.
 

Could I?

I groaned in frustration and stared
at the plate of food again.
 
I scooped
up a few of the eggs on a piece of bread and gave them a taste.

They were practically perfect.

Chapter 7:
 
Knock ‘em Dead

“I’m going to chew off every
fingernail.
 
There’ll be nothing left,”
Tracy groaned, holding out her left hand to me.
 
Violinists have to keep our fingernails short anyway because our
fingertips need to press down perfectly on the strings, but Tracy’s nails
were
pretty drastically short…and really did look like they’d been chewed
on.
 
Her manicure—a glittery red nail
polish—had almost been ruined.

“Don’t be nervous,” I told her
soothingly.
 
“We’re going to do all
right.”

“Yeah, exactly as we did in
rehearsal,” she muttered, one eyebrow up as she massaged her temples and
groaned a little under her breath.
 

We were partaking of our
pre-concert ritual, which consisted in the both of us getting coffees at the
sweet little coffee shop, “Thanks a Latte,” that was located around the corner
from the fine arts museum.
 
Layne was
sitting a few booths down from us, talking to my father on her cell phone about
“the incident,” which was how she was referring to last night’s
being-held-at-gunpoint.
 

I tugged at the ends of my
pure-white sleeves.
 
We were going a
tiny
bit casual this evening in our concert, which was, for me, wearing a
buttoned dress shirt, and a black pencil skirt with black tights and mary
janes.
 
Tracy wore the same white shirt,
but was in a pair of black slacks.
 
Her
curly hair was swept up in a sophisticated bun with tendrils dangling prettily
around her ears—mine was in a simple, high ponytail that I kept tugging at
because I was nervous.

Tracy pressed her iced coffee to
her forehead with a slight groan and sighed.
 
“I really shouldn’t have had so much to drink last night, and I
really
shouldn’t have gone to the dentist this morning.
 
He filled
two
cavities.
 
I mean, really, what was I thinking?”

I chuckled and shook my head with a
shrug, trying to keep it light.
 
Since
our concert
was
so soon, and I didn’t want to throw either one of us off
our game, I’d decided not to discuss “the incident” with Tracy, because I
didn’t want to worry her.
 
And, I mean
really—how do you bring up that sort of thing?
 
You’ll never guess what happened last night—we were held at gunpoint!
 
I fiddled with the ring on my finger and
cleared my throat.

“Layne made me breakfast in bed
this morning,” is what I finally settled on telling her.
 
Tracy set her drink down on the table
between us and raised both of her eyebrows, her hangover momentarily forgotten
as a slow smile spread across her face.
 

“No way!
 
Breakfast in bed,
seriously
?
 
So was this after a night of wild and passionate—”

“Seriously, mind, get the heck out
of gutter,” I said, jerking my thumb as I rolled my eyes and shook my
head.
 

“Honey, I think your mind needs to
jump
into
the gutter.
 
She’s so
attractive that not a
single person
has been unable to look at her when
they walk past her table,” Tracy hissed, leaning forward and tapping a bitten
fingernail on the tabletop.
 
“Earth to
Elizabeth’s lady parts, come in Elizabeth’s lady parts!”

“I really can’t take you anywhere,”
I muttered dryly and sighed.
 

“Is it the whole employee thing
that’s turning you off?
 
It’s probably
totally that,” Tracy groaned, leaning back in her booth.
 
She groaned a little under her breath, her
frown deepening.
 
“Seriously, Liz, she’s
not
your
employee.
 
Your
father
happened to hire her to keep
you
safe.
 
If she keeps you safe on a couple of dates, or—you know—in
bed
,
all the better.”